Attractions

Weimar enjoys a scenic location on the Ilm River, set against the backdrop of the Ettersberg and Vogtland hills. The city has many popular sights, but perhaps the best thing to do here is simply wander about on foot. A walk at night through the old streets that once felt the footsteps of Goethe, Bach, Wagner, and Schiller is particularly rewarding.

The town's main square, the Marktplatz, or market square, retains the old flavor of the city. Instead of breakfast at your hotel, visit one of the bakeries near the square and create your own breakfast, as many locals do. The daily produce market still takes place on the Marktplatz (7am-4pm). The painter Lucas Cranach the Elder lived here during his last year, from 1552 to 1553. Today, you can view the Lucas Cranach the Elder House from the outside, richly decorated and bearing a coat of arms of the Cranach family. A modern gallery is inside the house but is open only Thursday and Friday from noon to 8pm, Saturday 11am to 3pm.

For a midday break from sightseeing, we suggest a visit to Park an der Ilm (also known as Goethe Park) flanking the river. Goethe himself landscaped this park. It sports numerous 18th-century pavilions and is the best place in Weimar for a picnic.

If you've had a little too much Schiller and Goethe, flee the inner city and escape to Bauhaus Universität on Marienstrasse, just across the footpath in front of the Bauhaus building. Here you can meet Weimar students, nearly all of whom speak English.

In the evening, head for one of the smoky beer halls near Herderplatz, keeping in mind that Nietzsche, who spent the last 3 years of his life here, discovered them long before you.

The Thuringian Forest: Germany's Green Heart

"There is indeed no forest on all the earth as beautiful as the Thuringian," wrote the Danish novelist Martin Anderson Nexö. Trekkers and nature lovers have long extolled the scenic beauties of this region, which has often been called "the green heart of Germany." The Thuringer Wald [SS] was the former stamping ground of such philosophers and artists as Goethe, Schiller, Martin Luther, Ludwig Bechstein, and Bach.

The mountains within the forest, though not nearly as tall as the German Alps, are geological highlights. The highest peaks, around 985m (3,230 ft.), are composed of gneiss, porphyry, and granite; the foothills are made of softer strata of sandstone and sedimentary limestone.

The scenic, 150km (100-mile), northwest-to-southeast ramble known as the Thuringian High Road was one of the most popular destinations anywhere for East German schoolchildren and campers before reunification. You can take a lowland driving version by following Route 88 between Eisenach and Ilmenau, a city that Goethe loved.

Just as attractive as the region's scenic beauty are the dozens of unspoiled, charming medieval villages that pepper the landscape. Dornburg has a series of three palaces, perched high above the Saale River. Altenburg, directly south of Leipzig, is the home of a hilltop castle. Finally, Arnstadt, founded in 704, is the oldest town in the Thuringian Forest. It lies just beyond Erfurt. Today, the town's medieval walkways and buildings are being restored to their former glory.

More Sights

In the cemetery south of the town center lies the controversial Denkmal der März Gefallenen, a monument to the revolutionaries whose merciless and needless slaughter in 1919 (by government forces) so affected the ultraliberal Gropius and his Bauhaus followers. But most interesting today is the Goethe-Schiller Mausoleum, once the family vault of the Weimar dynasty, where Goethe and Schiller, friends in life, lie side by side in death. It was built in 1825 through 1826 in accordance with plans drawn up by Coudray, who consulted Goethe on the design and construction. Schiller was entombed here in 1827 and Goethe in 1832, both in oak coffins. Admission is free. Visiting hours are March to October Wednesday to Monday 9am to 1pm and 2 to 5pm, and November to February Wednesday to Monday 10am to 1pm and 2 to 4pm. A Russian-style chapel is on the south side of the mausoleum. It was built in 1859 for Maria Pavlovna, daughter-in-law of Duke Carl August.

Buchenwald Concentration Camp & Memorial Site -- The Buchenwald bus (no. 6) from Weimar's Hauptbahnhof goes 6km (4 miles) northwest of Weimar to Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (tel. 03643/4300; www.buchenwald.de). An estimated 250,000 Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, social misfits, criminals, and others were confined here from 1937 until the camp's liberation by the U.S. Army in 1945. Officially, Buchenwald was a work camp, so far fewer people were killed here than at other concentration camps.

Nonetheless, 56,000 people died here; many, many thousands of others were sent on from here to other death camps; and a quarter of a million people, from more than 30 nations, suffered unspeakable pain as prisoners here. Furthermore, atrocities practiced in Buchenwald have made its very name synonymous with human perversity. Medical experiments on prisoners were common here, and prisoners, ironically, did not get nearly the amount of care and protection that animals in the SS men's zoo received. This is also the concentration camp from which famed author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was liberated. (For more about his experiences at Buchenwald, read his best-selling book, Night.)

Buchenwald's sad history continued when Soviet occupation forces used the site as an internment camp from 1945 to 1950, where more than 7,000 people died and were buried in mass graves.

Today, Buchenwald is a haunting sight. Only fragments of the camp have been preserved, as much of it has vanished by deliberate destruction and through the wear and tear of many years. The clock in the gate building reflects the time of the liberation by the U.S. Army in 1945. The gate has JEDEM DAS SEINE ("to each his own") inscribed upon it: It is one of the only Nazi concentration camps with a gate that was not inscribed with ARBEIT MACHT FREI ("work will make you free"). All but a few buildings have been replaced with eerie black rocks filling in the foundations (which you can still see) of old barracks and more. The storehouse (as well as some other buildings) still exists in its original form, and the museum inside reflects both the Soviet and the Nazi past of the camp.

A well-planned and -executed monument/memorial lies about 1km (2/3 mile) from the remnants of the camp itself, with its own parking lot. The monument has several facets (sculpture, bell tower, and so on) built over the graves of more than 3,000 Buchenwald victims.

You can visit Buchenwald April to October Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm, and November to March Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 4pm. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. Admission is free.